


postcards from the void

by Junkyard_Rose



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Episode Coda: s3e02 Purpose in the Machine, F/M, Gen, Oops, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, simmons i love you i swear im sorry i keep hurting you, sorry about the 2nd person, this will probably be jossed very soon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 07:01:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4951057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Junkyard_Rose/pseuds/Junkyard_Rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're doing better, now</p>
            </blockquote>





	postcards from the void

Your bed is too soft so you sleep on the floor, curled up in between the wardrobe and the bed, with the long curved blade Bobbi had given you to replace your shiv under your pillow. No blankets, because blankets feel like they’re smothering you, wrapped around your neck, wrapped around your limbs, holding you down.

Fitz sleeps in your bed, just above you, one arm dangling down off the side, so you can reach out and touch him, feel the warmth of his skin, press your fingers against his pulse point when you start to doubt reality. When you scream yourself awake, knife in hand, Fitz knows not to touch you, to pull back and tell you quietly, slowly, “You’re safe. You’re on Earth, in your room at SHIELD, there’s nothing coming to get you, and you’re safe,” until you managed to get your breathing under control and heart rate steady, until you manage to relax your death grip on the knife, and reach out to take his hand. On a good night, it only happens two or three times. On a bad night, neither of you can rest for more than ten minutes.

It’s been three weeks since he brought you back. You’re doing better, now.

-

Food is hard. There – wherever _There_ had been – hardly anything had grown. Nothing lived, except you, and the things that had chased you. There had only been tough, leathery not-quite-plants that grew in the rocks, that had made your stomach cramp and bowels burn until you’d gotten used to it, and the not-quite-water. The not-quite-water was hard to find, and never in high quantity, so when you had to, you drunk your own urine. You’d spent long nights dreaming about food – takeaway and junk food, your father’s cooking that you’d always complained about, greasy diner food and fresh fruit, home-grown vegetables, tea and pastries and overcooked home-made pasta.

Now, all you can keep down are flavourless protein bars and smoothies made for famine victims. It takes you almost an hour to take tiny bites and even tinier sips, while Fitz sits beside you, his hand resting on your shoulder, just the slightest of touches, glaring away the various scientists who always want to talk to you, run tests on you, pick your brain about There when all you want to do is forget.

Coulson makes you go see a therapist, a quiet middle-aged woman who specializes in post-traumatic stress, who teaches you breathing exercises and doesn't mind when you cry in her office. She promises you, over and over again, that this is real, but you still think you might be dead, and this is heaven. You might be dead, and this is hell.

-

Skye – Daisy, now – sneaks up on you once, puts her hand on your arm, and you draw your knife and slash at her in a blind panic, and it’s only when you see you’ve cut her that you realize what’s happening, and then you start to cry and can’t stop. Fitz finds you later in his bathroom, standing in the shower with all your clothes on, still sobbing.

“It’s okay,” Fitz tells you, calm, steady, “You’re on Earth. You’re safe, you’re okay. Daisy’s okay, didn’t even need stitches. Everything’s okay.”

“It’s not,” you choke out. Nothing is ever going to be okay again. You aren’t _you_ anymore. You had to become someone else, to survive There, but you don’t like that person. You want to go back, but there’s no going back. There’s no –

Fitz puts his hand on your shoulder, gentle, steadily. The shower water is running cold, now, so you turn it off and get out, start stripping off your wet clothes. Fitz turns away to get you a towel, doesn’t look when he hands it to you, but you want him to. You want him to see the way your ribs and hips stick out, the new scars on your skin, the stubborn bruises that are yet to fade. You want him to look, but he doesn’t.

After you put on dry clothes, he towels your hair dry, and Daisy knocks on your door. There’s a bandage on her arm but she’s smiling, hesitantly, when she apologises for sneaking up on you. Daisy almost died bring you back from There, and you love her so, so much, but you don’t know how to say that so you just nod and she leaves again.

You have a bad night, that night, and when you wake up sometime around three am, you think that the things that chased you are in the room with you, they’re coming closer, you can’t move, you can’t breathe, you can’t think.

“You’re on Earth,” Fitz tells you. “You’re in your room at SHIELD, and it’s just you and me here. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

You reach out and take his hand. Feel his pulse point under your fingers, the steady rhythm of his heart. You wonder if this is what it felt like, for him, after he was brain damaged.

“You didn’t give up on me,” you whisper, and he squeezes your hand.

In the morning, you make yourself sit in the common room, make yourself talk to the others, Mack and Bobbi and Daisy and Hunter, and after a while your smile stops feeling forced.

-

After five weeks, you manage to sleep in your bed, curled up around Fitz, with your head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. Earlier, Daisy had trimmed your hair for you, and you’d spent the afternoon in the lab with Bobbi, and Coulson had told you that he was proud how far you’ve come. You still carry your knife everywhere, but May is teaching you how to defend yourself properly, and you don’t panic every time someone who isn’t Fitz touches you. Your good nights are more common than your bad nights, and you still cry at your therapist’s, and you still sometimes see things in the corner of your eye that aren’t really there, but you can eat proper food now, rice and bread and tea.

You’re doing better, now.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr at notvaleri.tumblr.com


End file.
